A few thoughts this week. After getting to know Apple’s CoreAudio and AudioUnits for a bit, I decided to take a step back and have a second look at AVFoundation. AVFoundation is supposed to be easier to deal with, but my initial learning of it, it didn’t seem as powerful. I may have been mistaken about that. I have to say that giving AVFoundation and the AVAudio Classes a second lookg was a smart move. It definitely seems to be more powerful then I originally thought, and easier to use. I have a feeling it is probably going to be the level I do the audio work for the project. It is not that I would not want to become a CoreAudio wizard, but seriously working with CoreAudio is like living in the Upside Down.

I am also thinking I am also going to start using XCode 8 beta, so when Apple releases the next everything in a month or so it isn’t a shock to relearn everything. Plus, after checking out the beta, I have to say the Documentation for Apple’s API is presented much better. Sure, there is a lot they could still add, but it is an improvement to how it is presented in XCode 7.

Finally, I have to say something about the fact the iPhone 7 is not going to have a headphone jack. I am not exactly happy with this, but then again I am not surprised. This the pretty typical of the changes [curveballs] that has been thrown my way in trying to develop for Apple. The problem is that the Structure Sensor needs the Lightning port, and I use the headphone port on my iPhone 6 for the audio. I need both ports for this project to work.

Now, I have no pressing interest to get this working on iPhone 7, so I am not too bothered by it. My guess is that the iPhone 6 models will probably be available for a while well, and they are just about perfect for this project. Still, I am hoping some third party company comes out with a Lightning port splitter. I am sure there are a lot of people like me which still use the AUX audio port for listening to their iPhones in their cars and recharge their phones with the Lightning port at the same time.

Basically, Summer is my worst time of the year, especially for productivity. It is not like I want to be out in the Sun, in fact just the opposite. There is the just something about hot weather and humidity, that just takes it out of me. In a way it is like Seasonal Affective Disorder [SAD] but reversed. Normally, people with SAD get depressed in the middle of winter with the shorter days, for me, it is the opposite. [Plus, I got hooked on Stranger Things.]

I have done work, but it is frustrating because it does not seem to amount to a lot of progress.

For example, realizing that I am probably going to have to build a proper AudioUnit to complete this project, I started to research their structure. Mainly Apple does provide a couple of sample code sets and helper libraries to build AudioUnit. Unfortunately, like I said in my earlier post they are not well documented. Especially since they are written in C++ which Apple seems to treat as reluctantly at possible.

Fortunately, I got the bright idea to use Doxygen to build the dependency trees for all the C++ code, and that helped a bit. Something about seeing how everything is laid out, and what needs what in terms of a graph helps a lot. Information, they I cannot pick up easily looking at the source code.

Also, I have spent a bit of bit going back and reviewing the UML designs and making some changes. Specifically, it just seems the best way to deal with Audio and MIDI in iOS app is to use singletons. I don’t have a probably with them, but I know some people do.

Anyway I am hoping with the semester starting up in a few weeks I can get back into the groove.